Monday, May 18, 2009

Ellen Welch Granter - 2009 show statement

My paintings are an expression of my desire to create beautiful and pure images of my favorite subjects. For me, the point of painting them is not to create a souvenir image of a place, or an accurate illustration, but rather to try to capture the subject’s barest essence in a sparely composed way using a lush palette and rich textures.The subjects of my paintings all come from my pesronal experience. My process usually begins with my own orignal photographs or sketches, then I strip away most of the details. I try to balance the composition over large luminous fields of layered color. I work quickly, in short bursts of concentration in an effort to allow the looseness and inspiration of the original idea to remain intact.Using large fields of undifferentiated color, I am trying to concentrate attention on the subject, such as the heart-stoppingly delicate smallness of a bird in the vastness of the sky, or the constellation of a group of birds as they alight and take off, or the patterns of wriggiling turtles swimming around a pond. As a counterpoint to the color fields, I incorporate linear elements such as reeds, powerlines, fences, or branches to help bring the scale of the subjects into focus. By keeping some edges blurred and some crisp and building in varying levels of abstraction, the image stays in motion and comes to life.What is interesting to me about my recent work is how the repetition of forms such as the house sparrow has allowed the myriad small variations and permutation that happen to become more important. This repetitive approach to my creative process has surprisingly multiplied for me the variety of ideas to explore.